The over-the-top cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry and classical music shouldn’t make for a perfect pair, but that’s precisely what they are in The Cat Concerto.
Released on April 26th, 1947, the cartoon short is considered, by many, the pinnacle of the cat and mouse’s classics.
The Cat Concerto is directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and has a very straightforward concept: Tom plays the piano at a formal concert (he’s even dressed in a tux). As the audience applauds, Tom adjusts the seat, wipes his hands, the conductor taps his baton, and he begins playing “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” by Franz Liszt, backed by an orchestra. Meanwhile, Jerry, the mouse who has been sleeping inside the piano, is awakened.
Jerry comes to the top of the piano and begins mockingly “conducting” Tom, and the cat then “flicks” Jerry off the piano, which only inspires the mouse to torture Tom more throughout the short.
What follows are some tune-fully clever gags, such as Jerry slamming Tom’s fingers with the piano cover, after which the cat continues playing with flattened fingers; Jerry replacing one of the keys with a mousetrap, as Tom then catches his finger in it; Jerry also switching up the music, so that Tom segues into “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” and the mouse also getting caught up in the gears like they’re factory machinery.
What makes all of this in The Cat Concerto wondrous and a standout among other Tom and Jerry offerings is that, here, their hijinks are choreographed (at times to the note) of the music, which Tom continues to play throughout the short, despite all the taunting from Jerry.
The animation and the backgrounds are also beautiful. Tom’s finger movements at the piano are remarkable to watch in their detail and the mechanisms inside the piano move with astonishing precision.
When The Cat Concerto was released, critics were impressed. However, the short was the subject of a dispute between two studios, as The Cat Concerto and the Warner Bros.’ Bugs Bunny short Rhapsody Rabbit bear a resemblance to each other (including the music used in each cartoon).
When both shorts were submitted for consideration to the Academy, MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, and theories abound as to how it happened. In fact, Michael Mallory wrote an extensive article on the controversy between the two films in August 2011 for Animation Magazine that examines it more in-depth. To this day, it remains uncertain how the two similar films were released around the same time.
The Cat Concerto would take home the Oscar that year and, now celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Tom and Jerry short is still regarded as one of the duo’s best.
In 1994, it was ranked at number forty-two among The 50 Greatest Cartoons in Jerry Beck’s book of the same name. Will Friedwald, one of the book’s contributors, sums up the appeal of The Cat Concerto perfectly: “The two protagonists revel in the opportunities for comic violence found in the mechanisms of the music-making process-parodying not only the hoity-toity manner of the concert virtuoso but the hammers and strings of the piano itself.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Let’s not forget the Walter Lantz Musical Miniature “Musical Moments from Chopin”, starring Andy Panda and Woody Woodpecker, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1947. It was a big year for piano recital cartoons!
You’re quite right that Tom’s finger movements are a joy to watch, and are especially impressive since he only has four of them on each hand. At the beginning of the Rhapsody, he is shown striking exactly the right keys on the piano; evidently the animators paid very close attention to the live action reference pianist. The level of accuracy declines as the cartoon goes on, however; Tom plays all the closing chords on the white keys, but the Rhapsody ends on an F-sharp major chord, which is played using only the black keys. I refuse to admit the possibility that Tom is using Irving Berlin’s transposing piano.
For a cogent and well-researched discussion of the Cat Concerto vs. Rhapsody Rabbit controversy, please see Thad Komorowski’s post for 26 February 2013.
Two Oscar winners in one: “On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe”, heard briefly in “The Cat Concerto”, won the Academy Award for Best Song that year. Judy Garland sang it in the MGM musical “The Harvey Girls”.
“Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” had many appearances in animated cartoons, but this is by far the most memorable and amusing of them all! Generally, a smart use of music can elevate a cartoon’s quality considerably, not only by timing the action to the beats but also by using it to emphasize a character’s emotion or make visual gags funnier, which is what this short does best in particular.
This classic makes me laugh out loud every single time! In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s why I wanted to take piano lessons!!!
The highest tribute, of course, is the blatant Bugs Bunny rip-off, rather than the parody you’d expect.
Neither cartoon “ripped off” the other, and in fact “Rhapsody Rabbit” was in production first. Here’s a link to Thad Komorowski’s article on the subject: https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/pianist-envy/ Michael Barrier speculates that the three contemporaneous piano recital cartoons were all inspired by the popularity of José Iturbi at the time, which seems reasonable to me.
Even IF it was a ripoff (and it wasn’t), Rhapsody Rabbit is infinitely superior.
I’m sure it’s a good cartoon, but after having to watch the 2 preceding ads about 4 times in a row each, I gave up.
Something I’ve wondered about the Academy Award procedure. How is it that The Cat Concerto got entry into the 1946 Oscars when it was a 1947 release? (Ditto for Tortoise and the Hare for 1934 and Little Orphan for 1948)
Sure, it’s a funny cartoon, but after sitting through the two commercials before it four times each the backrooms, I just couldn’t do it.